Blog Archives

Shila Morris is a graduate of the University of Nevada and a current graduate student as well. She is also the president of the Squeeze In restaurants in Nevada and California. In her very well prepared and executed talk, she describes both the challenges and joys of working with your family in a small business. In addition to financial stability, the American Dream for Shila and her family is the ability to do something meaningful together and have a positive impact on their employees, customers, and community.

After you watch this talk, please share your thoughts in the comment section below.

I use Barry Posner’s books in my Executive MBA course on Organizational Behavior. One of the concepts I love most from his writings is the importance of leadership credibility. Leadership credibility develops to the extent we do what we say we will do. Notice the “we” in this rather than the “me”. If we only speak and act in accordance with our own desires, we might have personal credibility, but not leadership credibility. Leaders speak and act in ways that “we” value. A leader walks the talk that represents us, not just him or herself.

Michelle Killebrew works for for IBM Social Business, where her team focuses on messaging and solutions that define social business and demonstrate how organizations can embrace this next information revolution in the workforce. In this TEDxUniversityofNevada 2015 talk, she discusses how technology, especially social technologies like Twitter and Facebook, can make us more human. Through our power of choice, we can decide whether we will enable social technologies to impact our lives in either a positive or negative way.

In his current role as General Manager for Microsoft’s Americas Operations Center, Owen Roberts leads a team of more than 2,000 employees and contractors in operational roles that support the fulfillment and revenue processing operations of the company’s $80+billion business. In addition to developing and nurturing partner and customer relationships, Owen’s team is responsible for building, launching, and maintaining operational programs and processes, and putting the infrastructure in place for Microsoft to support the technology of tomorrow.

Owen gave a masterful talk at TEDxUniversityofNevada 2015 about how he has embraced risk taking and change in his life and career. He shows how in his own life choosing adventure and uncertainty over safety and certainty has lead to career opportunities and set him ahead of his peers. Even though this advice is not new, so few people choose to really embrace change as a habit of well-being and success.

Please take the time to watch Owen’s talk and then share your thoughts in the comment section below!

In this very insightful talk, Liz describes how being inexperienced can actually help us and our teams do better and faster work because we are forced to assume a posture of learning. Living and working with rookie smarts can be accomplished with three simple choices 1) ask more questions, 2) seek novelty, and 3) treat work as play.

Please take the time to watch Liz’s talk, then share your thoughts in the comment section below.

Elizabeth Smart is an amazing woman. She delivered an extremely compelling talk at TEDxUniversityofNevada 2014 about overcoming extreme trials and remaining healthy and positive. Please take the time to watch this very important talk and share it with your friends. After you watch the video, please share your thoughts in the comment section below.

Harvey Turner is the senior and founding pastor of Living Stones Church in Reno, NV. His organization is often cited as among the fastest growing churches in the United States. In this talk from TEDxUniversityofNevada 2014, Harvey asserts that one of the keys to the health and growth of his organization is it’s community focus. Harvey encourages organizations to systematically find ways to for their members to be more involved in the community most proximal to their location. An integral, outward focus is good for the organization’s members, which is ultimately good for the organization.

After you watch the video, please share your thoughts in the comment section below.

In this excellent talk at TEDxUniversityofNevada 2014, Jamie Amelio, the founder of Caring for Cambodia, encourages us to get bothered and stay bothered about issues in the world we live in. Jamie tells the story of being an expatriate executive living in Singapore when she took a trip to Cambodia that forever changed her life. What she saw in Cambodia prompted her to return and eventually found 24 schools for needy children.

I use Barry Posner’s book The Truth About Leadership in my EMBA class on Organizational Behavior. In this talk he did for TEDxUniversityofNevada 2014, Barry talks about two truths from his book – you make a difference and you can’t do it alone. It’s an excellent talk. Please share your thoughts in the comment section below after you watch Barry’s talk.

Here is the video of my recent talk for TEDxReno. I have to tell you honestly that they had some problems with audio that day, starting with my talk. They edited out the entire front end of my talk, so I share it with you again below so you can know how it really started:

“Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.” President John Kennedy gave us this mantra of citizenship in his 1961 inaugural address. Two hundred and seventeen words before this now famous call to action, he told us why it matters with these words: “In your hands, my fellow citizens, more than in mine, will rest the final success or failure of our course.”

I’m glad I got the opportunity to do one of these. It is the most difficult talk I’ve ever given in my life. I bet I spent about 50 hours preparing – something I’ve never done before. The folks at TEDxReno did a very good job helping their speakers to prepare, something that I will try to copy when I help my team organize our next TEDxUniversityofNevada.